Congrats Sands on Law Review...

elegantpearl01

Co-sign it's important for Black Students to try out for co-curriculars. We need more black people on law review, trial team, journals, moot court, etc. Sands has the right attitude, that Sankofa mindset, once you get there, you reach back and try to encourage others to try out. And once you get into these organizations, run for offices and hold leadership positions. That's VERY crucial.

How many hours a day did you spend studying? Can you share some of your tips with us?

Sure, Scurvy. I'll always try to respond to good questions like this one.

Before I start, thanks again to everybody for all the congrats. I give thanks to God first and foremost for keeping me on the path. There are a lot of brothers and sisters out there who would be dying to sit in your shoes right now (talkin to the soon to be law students), so its crucial that we not only "go" to law school, but that we blaze a trail. I hope all of you not only just "go" to law school, but "achieve" when you get there. Can you imagine everybody on the board making Law Reivew at their respective schools? They'd have to do a case study on us or something, shoot maybe even a TV mini-series. But I'm gettin sidetracked, which consequently happens a lot during the school year as well.

OK, Scurvy, to answer your question, I'm assuming you are talking about studying for law school in general, as distinguished from work put in towards the actual law review competition. That being said, law school, as you sill soon find out, is a life style. First year is a hazing ritual. You find out a lot about yourself, your study habits, your sleep patterns, your hunger cycle, etc.

For me personally, I found that I should eat breakfast in the morning, and then not eat again until about 5 or 6 pm after classes were done, b/c if I ate lunch I would get sleepy during afternoon class. So my typical schedule, wake up around 8, eat breakfast, take vitamins, work out (important), get to school for my 10 o'clock, and essentially be in class from 10 to 5. Somewhere in the middle, when everybody else went to lunch, I went to the library, found a quiet corner, and read the E&E's for my next class.

After 5, grab some food and chop it up with the classmates for about an hour just rappin about anything NON-law related. (also important) Around 6 I went back to the library and stayed there until it closed, reading the next days assignments. During first semester, before you know how to speak legalese and before you have the "aha!" moments, you will probably spend a lot of time preparing for the next day's cases. This is ok and to be expected. For me, it meant sitting in that damn library from about 6pm to about 1,2,3 am. In the Spring semester, I was able to reduce this drastically, studying from 6pm to about 10pm. You get more efficient once you start "thinking like a lawyer." You start having those "aha" moments quicker. A case that might have taken you 2 hours to brief fall semester only takes you 15 minutes spring semester.

So I would say (outside of class time) my fall semester average time studying was somewhere around 9 hours a day during the week and 12-15 hours on the weekends; my spring semester average time studying was somewhere around 4 hours a day during the week and at most 8 hours on the weekends, if that. Like I said, you just become more efficient over time. But the long hours are necessary at first while you are sorting stuff out. The Law takes getting used to. The Case and Socratic methods are intentially designed to be difficult. As a 1L, be prepared to put in MAD hours at first. Just know that right now.

A law professor could easily walk into class and just EXPLAIN your entire class to you in nice, easy to understand english, but that's not the way its done. It's supposed to be difficult b/c a lawyer has to learn to think on his or her own. They want you to drag yourself through it so that by the time you graduate you are self-sufficient. Class is not for questions, its only for you to give answers. And as long as you know that any given day you can get called on to explain an entire concept of the law, you come correct with your A game and prepare for class as if you were a lawyer preparing for court.

The system has its ups and downs but overall I think it gets everybody to the finish line one way or another. Some of us gotta get dragged across the line, some of us walk, a few of us actually end up running across it. I was one who tried to come in running, got knocked the f*ck out, got back up, got knocked the f*ck out again, then learned to crawl, then learned to walk and eventually had a nice steady jogging pace going there at the end of 1L.

Hope that sheds some light and gives you a leg up. Holla back with any other ?'s.

Fabyahluss

How many hours a day did you spend studying? Can you share some of your tips with us?

Sure, Scurvy. I'll always try to respond to good questions like this one.

Before I start, thanks again to everybody for all the congrats. I give thanks to God first and foremost for keeping me on the path. There are a lot of brothers and sisters out there who would be dying to sit in your shoes right now (talkin to the soon to be law students), so its crucial that we not only "go" to law school, but that we blaze a trail. I hope all of you not only just "go" to law school, but "achieve" when you get there. Can you imagine everybody on the board making Law Reivew at their respective schools? They'd have to do a case study on us or something, shoot maybe even a TV mini-series. But I'm gettin sidetracked, which consequently happens a lot during the school year as well.

OK, Scurvy, to answer your question, I'm assuming you are talking about studying for law school in general, as distinguished from work put in towards the actual law review competition. That being said, law school, as you sill soon find out, is a life style. First year is a hazing ritual. You find out a lot about yourself, your study habits, your sleep patterns, your hunger cycle, etc.

For me personally, I found that I should eat breakfast in the morning, and then not eat again until about 5 or 6 pm after classes were done, b/c if I ate lunch I would get sleepy during afternoon class. So my typical schedule, wake up around 8, eat breakfast, take vitamins, work out (important), get to school for my 10 o'clock, and essentially be in class from 10 to 5. Somewhere in the middle, when everybody else went to lunch, I went to the library, found a quiet corner, and read the E&E's for my next class.

After 5, grab some food and chop it up with the classmates for about an hour just rappin about anything NON-law related. (also important) Around 6 I went back to the library and stayed there until it closed, reading the next days assignments. During first semester, before you know how to speak legalese and before you have the "aha!" moments, you will probably spend a lot of time preparing for the next day's cases. This is ok and to be expected. For me, it meant sitting in that damn library from about 6pm to about 1,2,3 am. In the Spring semester, I was able to reduce this drastically, studying from 6pm to about 10pm. You get more efficient once you start "thinking like a lawyer." You start having those "aha" moments quicker. A case that might have taken you 2 hours to brief fall semester only takes you 15 minutes spring semester.

So I would say (outside of class time) my fall semester average time studying was somewhere around 9 hours a day during the week and 12-15 hours on the weekends; my spring semester average time studying was somewhere around 4 hours a day during the week and at most 8 hours on the weekends, if that. Like I said, you just become more efficient over time. But the long hours are necessary at first while you are sorting stuff out. The Law takes getting used to. The Case and Socratic methods are intentially designed to be difficult. As a 1L, be prepared to put in MAD hours at first. Just know that right now.

A law professor could easily walk into class and just EXPLAIN your entire class to you in nice, easy to understand english, but that's not the way its done. It's supposed to be difficult b/c a lawyer has to learn to think on his or her own. They want you to drag yourself through it so that by the time you graduate you are self-sufficient. Class is not for questions, its only for you to give answers. And as long as you know that any given day you can get called on to explain an entire concept of the law, you come correct with your A game and prepare for class as if you were a lawyer preparing for court.

The system has its ups and downs but overall I think it gets everybody to the finish line one way or another. Some of us gotta get dragged across the line, some of us walk, a few of us actually end up running across it. I was one who tried to come in running, got knocked the f*ck out, got back up, got knocked the f*ck out again, then learned to crawl, then learned to walk and eventually had a nice steady jogging pace going there at the end of 1L.

Hope that sheds some light and gives you a leg up. Holla back with any other ?'s.

Yo

Thanks, Sands for all the info and advice! It was really helpful and insightful for those soon-to-be 1Ls who don't really know what to expect to put in as a 1L. I can only hope that some of the individuals on this board who have completed their 1st year can offer their experiences and advice as well, regardless of whether or not they have made Law Review (HINT HINT) ...

Sands, I have a question...in your response to Scurvy you mentioned E&E's, do you use any other study aids or did you?? Oh and did you do any prepping before you started your 1L?? Thanks!

Let me get this out of the way right now - NO PREPPING IN THE CHAMPAIGNE ROOM!!! NONE!!! But you don't want to chill. You want to Prep. But there is NO PREPPING in the Champaigne Room.

So just relax before law school. Your life as you know it will be over soon enough. And besides every professor is different and will add their own twist to what they want you to know. Spending weeks before law school reading stuff you will not be tested on is a waste of your time. Not only that, but you just can't learn "The Law" without going through the cases. Its the constant repetition of case after case after case that you are not yet able to understand at this point, even if you were to pick up an E&E and read it cover to cover.

That being said, there are 3 types of people in law school...

1. The E&E People2. The Gilbert's People3. The Emanuel's People

Each of these suppliments has pro's and con's over the other and each are a good source of understanding b/c they break things down when your professors won't. They all cost about the same ($30) and you should be able to get each of them for 1/2 price on Amazon.com. However I did notice that no matter if you started off as a 1, 2 or 3, everybody ended up buying the E&E's second semester. I started off as an E&E person and I stuck with them throughout the year. The Gilberts & Emanuels do a good job of pulling out the black letter law in outline form, but I found the E&E approach worked better for me. The E&E gives a comprehensive explanation of how this concept of law came to be, how it is applied today, and then quizes you with examples at the end of every section to drive it home.

If you're not sure if one is working for you during the semester, look at your study partner's supplement and see if it is more your style. Each person learns differently and in the end, you want to know what will work best for you.

I will admit that the Torts E&E does not address all the areas of torts in great detail, such as false imprissonment, wrongful death etc. It talks about the main intentional torts (assault & battery) and the infamous unintentional tort of negligence and that's about it. So what I would suggest is to get E&E for Torts and pick up the little Crunch Time* for Torts also, to make sure you cover all the bases.

HOWEVER, in the back of the Torts E&E, there is a section written by Glannon on "How to write a law school exam" that saved my life. It had all the classic mistakes that law students make, and how to correct them. I saw exactly what mistakes I was making. Unfortunately I didn't read this section until my Torts exam, which was my last exam fall semester! But on a positive tip, after I read that section, I never made anything less than a B+ on any law school exam from that point on.

* - Crunch Times are good for giving you the rules of law in a quick, easy to read, non-detailed way. They are designed to be bought by freaked out law students 2 weeks before exams, so they tend to cut to the point.

CASE BRIEFS:

When it comes to case brief supplements, again, there are 3 types of people:

1. LegalLines2. HighCourts3. CaseNotes

All of these are good, and unlike the substantive supplements above, there really is no clear winner. You unfortunately can't buy these on-line until you know what Case book your professor has assigned because they are keyed to your particular case book. The HighCourts are probably the most popular, because they have funny cartoon pictures to go with each case. To be honest I briefed my own cases fall semester so I didn't use any of these, which was not the smartest move. If I could do it over, I would brief on my own for about a month, maybe a month and a half, and then I would by a case brief supplement for the rest of the semester. You want to be able to develop the skill of briefing on your own but its not necessary to keep briefing cases for the rest of the semester after you've got it down - time is better spent on practicing exams. For Constitutional Law they are a NECESSITY. I broke down and bought the CaseNotes for Con Law after about the 3rd or 4th Supreme Court Case. Supreme Court cases be like 80 pages long with 3 or 4 concurring opinions and 3 or 4 dissenting opinions. Planned Parenthood v. Casey (the current rule on Abortion) is literally 165 pages. You do not have time to read all that bullsh!t. Buy one of these case brief supplements and call it a day.

One more thing - get a Law/English pocket dictionary. Shouldn't cost more than $15. Cases are written by lawyers for laywers so you're gonna need it every 5 seconds at the beginning of the year when you're trying to translate the cases you're reading into plain English (what you will soon call Layman's terms after you become fluent in legalese). You will notice that as the months pass, you will use you dictionary less and less. I don't think I pulled my dictionary out at all Spring semester.

SO IN RECAP, I would highly suggest that you buy a substantive supplement for all of the "Big 6" first year classes (Torts, Property, Contracts, Crim Law, Civ. Pro. & Con Law). Do this today if you haven't already. This should run you no more than $30 each. I bought all mine "used" and in good condition off of Amazon.com for around $12 - $15 bucks each.

IN ADDITION, when you get to law school, find out which case book you have in each class and buy the case brief supplement. I would tell you to wait until after you've developed your briefing skills before you buy them but if your school is anything like mine they will be sold out by then, so just buy the damn things at the beginning of the semester. But if you can help it, don't use them until you get your briefing skills down. This is crucial. It will help with the exam, trust me.

Overall, look to spend between 2-300 bucks on 1L supplements. It's an investment. You're gonna be making 2-300 MEEELEON DOLLARS when you get out so why wouldn't you take the opportunity to grab everything you can get your hands that will help out?